In Ireland, a Hearing on a Plot to Kill a Swedish Cartoonist

WATERFORD, Ireland — A late-night court hearing Monday in this quiet Irish town gave new glimpses into the case that American and Irish prosecutors are pursuing against a group of Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic suspected of plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad atop the body of a dog.

Five of the seven people arrested in Ireland a week ago have been released, the last of them shortly before Monday’s hearing. But two others, an Algerian man and a Libyan man, were formally charged with relatively minor offenses that lawyers involved in the case said could keep them in custody while more serious charges, including conspiracy to murder, are weighed by Irish prosecutors. The lawyers said charges against the five others were also possible.

The Algerian who appeared in the Waterford court, named as Ali Charaf Damache, 45, was said by police officials to be suspected of being the group’s leader. Mr. Damache, a 10-year resident of Ireland, was charged with sending a threatening computer message to another Muslim in Waterford. The Libyan, named as Abdul Salam al Jahani, 32, was charged with using a false name to obtain asylum status in Ireland in 2001. Both were ordered held without bail while an investigation continued.

No reference was made in the 15-minute hearing to the wider circumstances of the case, which has centered in the United States on a 46-year-old Pennsylvania woman, Colleen R. LaRose, a Muslim convert who adopted the pseudonym of JihadJane on the Internet, and has been in custody in Philadelphia since the fall on charges of linking up with militants overseas in a plot to carry out a murder, apparently that of the Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks.

The arrests in Ireland drew a second American woman into the case: Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, from Leadville, Colo.. A Muslim convert like Ms. LaRose, Ms. Paulin-Ramirez is the wife of Mr. Damache, the Algerian charged in the Monday’s hearing, according to a Waterford lawyer involved in the case, and is several months pregnant. She was one of the seven arrested last Tuesday, but was released on the weekend.

The alleged plot against the cartoonist, and the links to the two American women, appear to have at least been one reason American, British and other Western counterterrorism organizations were placed on alert earlier this year about the risks posed by a new cadre of potential terrorists — white Caucasian women from Western countries with no previously known ties to Islamic terrorist groups — who might use their unthreatening profiles to elude surveillance and detection at airports and other places vulnerable to attacks.

Ms. LaRose and Ms. Paulin-Ramirez are both white and blond, and were raised as Christians. Defense lawyers in Waterford have said that Ms. LaRose spent two weeks in Ireland last fall, meeting with some of those who were arrested last week by the Irish police. The lawyers have said that Ms. Paulin-Ramirez arrived in Ireland at about the same time, and remained with Mr. Damache in Waterford.

American law enforcement officials have said that Ms. LaRose was arrested last October in Philadelphia, shortly after she returned from Ireland. Defense lawyers in Ireland said that from what they have learned from police investigators and their clients, the seven arrested in Ireland came under police surveillance after they were identified by Ms. LaRose under questioning by the FBI.

In addition to Mr. Damache, Mr. Jahani and Ms. Paulin-Ramirez, those arrested last week included a 26-year-old Croat, Danijel Orsov, also a Muslim convert; Nadah Sameh, a Libyan woman in her 30s; and Ghamraffan Slimane and his wife, Ilef, an Algerian couple in their late 40s who were the only people arrested who were not living in Waterford. The lawyers said the couple operated a bakery in the neighboring city of Cork.

Ms. Paulin-Ramirez’s mother, Christine Mott, 59, said in an interview last week in Colorado that her daughter announced her conversion to Islam last Easter and became increasingly estranged from her family. She said that Ms. Paulin-Ramirez had been in contact with a man named Ali via the Internet, and that in the months before she left for Europe she had spent a lot of time on the computer, even neglecting her son from a previous marriage, Christian, 6, who is now in a state-run children’s home in Waterford.

Eamon Quinn reported from Waterford and John F. Burns from London. An earlier version of this article misstated the charges against Ali Charaf Damache and the age of Abdul Salam al Jahani.